The Glass Delusion draws on the power of animals, the strangeness of home and the mysteries of the future. Blending the mythic and the domestic, it is a book haunted by the lost, by buried objects and preserved creatures, unearthed memories and secrets brought to light. The poems in The Glass Delusion dwell on the meaning of where we live and how we live. They are ecologically aware, uncanny and speculative. Curtis brings to life such characters as Dr Who’s wife; Paul, a psychic octopus; a troublesome poltergeist; an orchestra of insects and an enchanted version of Essex. Sensuous, musical and shot through with wry humour, Curtis’ second book will move and surprise you.

“These highly imaginative scenarios have the jubilation of discovery being made on the hoof. The poems are daring, wondrous and unexpectedly funny. Reading Curtis is like being blown offwards by a whisper.” —Daljit Nagra

“If Abi Curtis’s first collection plotted a course through myths both personal and legendary, The Glass Delusion wanders off from the breadcrumb trail altogether and finds its own way home through the forest of our collective unconscious. Reading her is to be reminded of the mystery of every living creature, to awake from your own delusions to find that reality is even stranger. ” —Luke Kennard

“These poems playfully and tenderly blur the border between fact and fantasy, imbuing true stories with a melancholy magic and establishing fables which feel all too true.” —Antony Dunn

“Tender, surprising, funny and sad, the poems of The Glass Delusion demonstrate a range of preoccupations, passions and interests unique in contemporary poetry. In its fascination with the who (wittily explored in ‘Marrying Doctor Who’) and the what (the quiddity of a giant squid in the stunning poem, ‘Squiddity’), with history and the everyday, Abi Curtis’s poetry has a strange beauty, a precision and reserve reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop. This is a remarkable volume.” —Nicholas Royle, author of The Uncanny

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Abi Curtis’s first collection Unexpected Weather was a winner of Salt’s Crashaw Prize in 2008. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2004 and holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Sussex. She is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at York St John University.

WINNER OF THE CRASHAW PRIZE 2008 Abi Curtis’s first collection, Unexpected Weather, makes the familiar extraordinary, and the supernatural everyday. In poems about animals and clouds, scientists and circus performers, about love and bean-pods, about bruises and myths and the moments before death, her deft use and playful subversions of form give her verse an exquisite poise between gravity and lightness.